Israel engineers are behind the development of the largest communications router in the world, launched by Cisco.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

BBC Presents – How Israel turned itself into a high-tech hub

When a grey-haired grandmother
clutching a smartphone mounted the stage at Montreal’s Start-up Festival
this summer, young Israeli entrepreneur Guy Rosen knew he had pocketed a
very special award.

His company, Tel Aviv-based Onavo, offers an application that shrinks
mobile phone data to help users save money – and appeals to any age.
That made Onavo the winner of the Grandmother’s Award for best start-up,
judged by tech-agnostic ladies in the later stages of life.

Standing in his office in Tel Aviv, Mr Rosen recalls the moment:
“They went on stage and said: ‘We love Onavo and we understand what it
does… it is such an easy app to understand’ – we just save money, that’s
it, period, they loved us.”

Guy Rosen is one of Israel’s many young, enthusiastic entrepreneurs who, fresh out of the army, decided to set up a tech firm.

Tiny Israel, a country embroiled in conflicts
for decades, has managed to transform itself from a stretch of farmland
into a high-tech wonder.

Formula for success

Israel currently has almost 4,000 active technology start-ups – more
than any other country outside the United States, according to Israel
Venture Capital Research Centre.

In 2010 alone the flow of venture capital amounted to $884m (£558m).

The result: high-tech exports from Israel are valued at about $18.4bn
a year, making up more than 45% of Israel’s exports, according to the
Central Bureau of Statistics.

Israel is a world leader in terms of research and development
spending as a percentage of the economy; it’s top in both the number of
start-ups and engineers as a proportion of the population; and it’s
first in per capita venture capital investment.

Not bad for a country of some eight million people – fewer than, say, Moscow or New York.

Serial entrepreneur Yossi Vardi says there is a whole blend of
factors responsible for turning Israel into a start-up miracle. He
himself has invested in more than 80 Israeli high-tech firms – among
them the first web messaging service ICQ. He sold many of them to
technology giants such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco.

“If you look at how this country was created, it was really a
start-up on the large scale,” says Mr Vardi, who has been dubbed the
godfather of Israel’s high-tech industry.

“A bunch of crazy people came here, trying to pursue a dream of 2,000 years.”

Over just a few decades, Israeli start-ups have developed
groundbreaking technologies in areas such as computing, clean technology
and life sciences, to name a few.

“The high-tech is a popular story right now, the internet gave it a
lot of visibility, but the story of the culture and the spirit is part
and parcel from the kinds of the cultural genes of [the Israeli]
people.”

Click To View Video

Government’s role

But there is more to this start-up scene than
certain aspects of Israeli culture – the lack of hierarchy, a constant
drive for individualism, regular risk taking. The government played a
key role in the rapid rise of this start-up nation.

Military service is compulsory, but besides regular military units,
the army also has designated hi-tech units, where computer-savvy
conscripts are constantly prompted to come up with innovative ideas in
disciplines such as computer security, cryptography, communications and
electronic warfare.

“The military enables young people in certain units to get
technological skills, to run large technological projects at a very
young age, where they need to improvise in order to get fast solutions,”
says Prof Niron Hashai from the Jerusalem School of Business
Administration at Hebrew University.

Once back in the real world, many military alumni use the newly acquired experience to launch their own technology start-ups.

And then, of course, there is Jewish immigration – a key driver of the country’s economy since its foundation.

The biggest and the most important wave of immigration came from Russia, says Prof Hashai.
“Many were very smart people with technological background,” he says.

“Maybe they were not so much entrepreneurs, but when these guys meet Israeli-born guys, many interesting things happen.”

ACT NOW for ISRAEL: Flush ‘LUSH’ Cosmetics!

LUSH Cosmetics has quietly closed its Beverly Hills, California location several months after a group known as “Join the Boycott LA” (www.JTBLA.com) organized a protest outside the store to expose the company’s support of PLO extremism. LUSH, with headquarters in the UK and stores in over 40 countries around the world, is using its customers’ money to support the PLO’s extremist “One World Campaign”. This virulently anti-Israel organization portrays Israel as an “illegal” occupier committing crimes against “Palestine” and grossly exaggerates the suffering in Gaza, placing responsibility solely on the Israelis.

There is much more work to be done. We urge you to ACT NOW FOR ISRAEL by sending an email to customercare@lush.co.uk to protest their anti-Israel extremism.

It has come to our attention that LUSH, a leading luxury handmade cosmetics company, gives a percentage of its profits to an anti-Israel organization called “OneWorld”. Upon visiting the OneWorld website (http://freedomoneworld.org/), it is very clear that they are supported by extreme anti-Israel groups that are sympathetic to terrorist activity against the State of Israel. For example, one of the supporting groups is called “Friends of al-Aqsa”. Visiting their website speaks for itself: http://www.foa.org.uk/.

Did You Know?

Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

Did You Know?

An Israeli-initiated project is drastically lowering the mortality rate of Ethiopian children infected with the AIDS/HIV virus.

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I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.- Golda Meir